Grooveshark goes offline in Germany due to high costs
updated 03:25 pm EST, Wed January 18, 2012
Grooveshark pulls German page because of GEMA
Music streaming service Grooveshark has pulled its German web page offline on its own, stating it is forced to pay "unreasonably high" operating costs. These costs mainly involve licensing fees for music by GEMA. The statement on the site continued, stating it hopes to come back one day.
It further asked users to write to GEMA to reduce costs for providers and services such as Grooveshark. GEMA is the local music rights collections agency in Germany, touting 64,000 members and representing over two million rights holders.
GEMA has been known to block videos on YouTube in the past, citing copyright laws.
Grooveshark is also facing copyright infringement and royalty issues lawsuits in the US from Sony, Universal, Warner, and EMI. [via TorrentFreak]
